Why are Human-Computer Interfaces Difficult to Design and Implement?
Brad A. Myers
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Technical
Report, no. CMU-CS-93-183. July 1993.
A revised version appears as: "Challenges of HCI Design
and Implementation," ACM Interactions. Vol. 1, no. 1. January, 1994.
pp. 73-83.
Everyone knows that designing and implementing human-computer
interfaces is difficult and time-consuming. However, there is little
discussion of why this is true. Should we expect that a new method is
around the corner that will make the design easier? Will the next
generation of user interface toolkits make the implementation trivial?
No. This article discusses reasons why user interface design and
implementation are inherently difficult tasks and will remain so for
the foreseeable future.